BRUSSELS: Europe wants to become a paradise for entrepreneurs, but unions and EU lawmakers fear a special new business rulebook known as \u201cEU Inc\u201d could unleash problems for workers by eroding labour rights.<\/p>\n
The European Union has ramped up efforts to make the bloc\u2019s businesses better compete with US and Chinese rivals, fearing they will fall further behind. A major part of the push is \u201cEU Inc\u201d, a voluntary regime proposed in March that would allow companies to be established online in less than 48 hours\u2014with a special pan-European status. That would make it easier to do business in the EU since any entrepreneur could set up a firm that can swiftly get to work across the 27 member states.<\/p>\n
But that sounds better on paper than in practice for the proposal\u2019s critics.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the surface it looks like a technical company law proposal,\u201d Marcus Meyer-Erdmann, a researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), said. \u201cBut underneath there are a lot of core elements like pay, worker protection, individual workers\u2019 rights, also dismissal protection… that would be rendered obsolete in a sense,\u201d he added. The EU executive, however, has repeatedly insisted the new rules would not corrode national labor and tax laws.<\/p>\n
Not everyone is reassured by the European Commission\u2019s promises. If the proposal becomes law as it currently stands, \u201cthe first thing that would happen is that it would weaken workers\u2019 representation rights\u201d in corporate governance, warned Finnish radical left EU lawmaker Li Andersson.<\/p>\n
She told AFP the proposal \u201cclearly opens up the possibility\u201d for companies to register where labor rights are the weakest. \u201cEveryone agrees that innovative companies must be fostered. The problem is that the commission has made it an unlimited scope,\u201d ETUI\u2019s Meyer-Erdmann said.<\/p>\n
Meyer-Erdmann echoed Andersson\u2019s fears. \u201cNow a multinational corporation can use this new EU Inc for corporate engineering,\u201d he told AFP, which means companies could take advantage of the status to reduce their social and legal obligations as much as possible. For example, the new rules could allow companies to create several EU Inc holdings and subsidiaries to stay below the thresholds forcing company boards to include workers\u2019 representatives. Members of the European Parliament take such risks seriously, and have indicated they will push changes to the text during negotiations.<\/p>\n
EU social democrat lawmaker Rene Repasi, who will spearhead negotiations with European capitals on a final version of the law, has already included a raft of worker-friendly proposals in his draft report.<\/p>\n
The current proposal \u201copens the door wide open to regime shopping\u201d, Repasi said, referring to the practice where companies opt for a location with lower taxes and wages. Repasi said he wants to ensure the rules apply to company employees where they work, not where the business is based\u2014and also wants to exclude sectors like catering and construction from the rules.<\/p>\n
Lawmaker Andersson welcomed the efforts to change the rules, but said \u201cit is not going far enough when it comes to workers\u2019 safeguards\u201d. She said she was also concerned about Brussels\u2019 push to approve the rules by the end of the year. Centrist French EU lawmaker Pascal Canfin said the new rulebook would not touch labor law. He has been speaking with European unions about possible protections and offering reassurances that workers\u2019 rights will be protected.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe proposal must not have loopholes that allow abuses,\u201d Canfin, who will also take part in negotiations on behalf of the parliament, said. Canfin also defended the proposal\u2019s push for stock options for employees, which some fear would replace wages, giving France as an example of where they are \u201cmore of a bonus to attract employees to one company rather than another\u201d.<\/p>\n
The French model should be replicated at the European level, he said, \u201cto make it easier for entrepreneurs to give employees a stake in their companies\u201d. \u2013 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS: Europe wants to become a paradise for entrepreneurs, but unions and EU lawmakers fear a special new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[27381,258,32265,2899,2898,42619,46489,40818],"class_list":["post-87774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-european-parliament","tag-eu-inc","tag-european-parliament","tag-fears","tag-kuwait-news","tag-kuwait-times","tag-status","tag-threatens","tag-workers-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}